Scattered Edges
by ALC Punk
Summary: AU. Jack O'Neill contemplates things in his current life (spoilers 78)


Disclaimer: Don't own 'em.  
  
Notes: Just... something spastically strange. Inspired by (the bastards known as) Something for Kate.  
  
Spoilers: s7/8  
  
Rating: PG13  
  
Scattered Edges  
  
by Ana Lyssie Cotton  
  
Jack O'Neill doesn't know how it began, he only knows he doesn't really ever want it to stop. Or maybe it should stop, seeing as how it's all completely screwed-up, and it makes him wonder if he ever really could have been a better man. But he rarely thinks about that sort of thing, now.  
  
Because she's there.  
  
And it's not HER her, but that's only a consideration a tiny part of his brain takes. That last vestige of a conscience he never thought he had.  
  
Even after all this time, he wonders, of course. He wonders what she would have felt like, beneath him. Would she have arched or writhed or pulled or simply screamed? He likes to imagine she would have been a screamer, but that it was him making her do it. And he also considers her above him, skin glistening with sweat. Because it would be like that, for them.  
  
Would have.  
  
And it's not that Elizabeth isn't good at what she does. His body is quite happy with what she does, in fact.  
  
But it's not who it should be.  
  
Daniel, of course, isn't speaking to him. But then, Jack doesn't think Daniel's really speaking to anyone, anyway. And he gets a thrill out of that. (She would have pointed out he was being petty, and he would have replied with a whine that, hell, he was allowed to be petty, thank you very much, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. But she wasn't there, and Daniel was...)  
  
He has no idea where Teal'c is. Half-suspects he's dead and buried somewhere.  
  
He remembers, back before this all started (when things seemed so complicated--but that was a lie, considering the way they are now. Or maybe the simplicity of now only seems complicated), when they all used to laugh together.  
  
And he misses that.   
  
Sometimes he wakes in the night, clawing out of dreams of Ba'al, Anubis, Apophis, Sokar, half a dozen nightmares that he associates with someone other than the brunette curled next to him. And he wishes it were blonde hair on the pillow, and understanding blue eyes that meet his.   
  
When he first was revived, he tried to get them to tell him.  
  
There were parts of the story that no one knew, really. And the only certainties were that she was dead and gone and he was alive, because she'd... done something.  
  
And he's certain Teal'c would have told him, but Teal'c's gone. Daniel, for all that he wanted to know, doesn't. Simply doesn't. And Elizabeth... Elizabeth resents her for what she did, what she's done. Resents him for falling into this pattern so easily.  
  
Yet she continues coming back.  
  
He would never have pegged her for a country girl, half-suspects she's only there for the fishing and the quiet.  
  
In the six months since Anubis and every goa'uld was defeated, he's wondered what she would have done. The mountain is probably up and running, with a thousand geeks happily spreading egg-head theories here there and everywhere. Nooks and crannies of scientific knowledge will be uncovered and harnessed. And bits of him wish she were there, to smile at him. To laugh and babble incomprehnsibly about her latest experiment.  
  
To see, one last time, the animation in her face.  
  
Never gonna happen.  
  
He tries not to think about the fact that there was nothing left to bury.  
  
Tries not to hold it against Thor (and Teal'c, Daniel)... Elizabeth. And that could be half the reason he allows this. And half the reason he sometimes considers simply walking away from everything and burying himself in Alaska.  
  
Maybe he could run a charter plane service, there. Meet a nice redhead, have kids...  
  
He really can't ever see himself as a grandfather.  
  
There's nothing that will bring her back.  
  
In the words of Elizabeth Weir, for all intents and purposes, Sam Carter is dead.  
  
Long live the SGC.  
  
-finis-  
  
I'll put the pieces together  
  
But I'll never ever know - Something for Kate 'Letter to the Editor' 


End file.
